I’ve been thinking along similar lines. I don’t know if it’s “rigged” as you say, but I’m not denying it either. I keep looking for the rugged, haven’t figured that one out yet.

Not that you need convincing but think about this, here are some , as far as I can tell, honest to goodness facts.

Illegal immigrants in the USA are closer to 22 million, not 11 million as reported.Most of them are visa over stays, not border crossers.Southern border crossings by illegals started going down during Obama and continued s downward.The number of deaths at the boarder peaked under Obama and has been going downward.The murder rate in the USA has been going downward for quite a while.Mass murders are mostly men, and fairly evenly distributed by race.The person most likely to kill you is your husband or son.

There is a lot of good news there, and some not so much. But from those “facts” things sound like they are generally getting better. Yet we are in this state of high anxiety and agitation.

I feel someone is spooking the herd, getting ready to push it to stampede.

Wrong. The republicans have a terrible track record on social issues and the environment. Just because the dems haven't done enough doesn't mean there is no difference in policy.

Got to agree with you. We are at the level of cognitive dissonance as a society.

On difference, right off, is that Republicans want to exploit the differences and Democrats want to triangulate over the differences. They're both living a lie, but the Republican lie is far more egregious and ultimately damaging.

We're not going to survive the coming tumult by retreating into our narrow definitions of privilege and rights and exclusion. It is ridiculous that anyone would welcome a civil war in our midst, a civil war of neighbor against neighbor. That is best left to the future, which may not be all that far off, actually.

I’ve been thinking along similar lines. I don’t know if it’s “rigged” as you say, but I’m not denying it either. I keep looking for the rugged, haven’t figured that one out yet..

I don't think this growing distraction/chaos/dysfunction is premeditatively rigged by some secret elites somewhere. But as everyone becomes numb to this dysfunction this creates a very convenient shadow under which corrupt corporations and government can maneuver with almost impunity.

Since most of us are over 60 it is not hard to go back in your mind to say 40 or 50 years ago and recall that society in general was on more solid ground in terms of having a collective sense of outrage over civic irregularities like rudeness, corruption, scandal, etc. Of course corruption was there back then but it was more covert. Also the middle class back then was able to put their kids through college without debt so they were at peace and didn't dig too deep into the corrupt mechanitions of corporations and the government.

We live in different times. The point of this current inquiry of the last couple of posts is to recognize that society has become so numb to the dysfunction that this creates a smoke screen of sorts where incompetency becomes normalized. This allows for corruption to go full speed rampant.

Take the Eppstein case for example. The coroner says it was really a suicide. The public is so jaded by scandal that they will quickly forget and move on to the next scandal. Those who bang the conspiracy drums that this was a set up will also join the clamor of this back ground of dysfunction which actually has the opposite effect of waking people up, it makes them further retreat into numbness. This example applies to almost all the dysfunctions out there and even applies to issues like climate change.

A great fog of numbness dominates the collective. I am guilty also of retreating. I am pinning the insects I collected on my recent entomological expedition withdrawing further into the natural world.

I have little appetite for this mess anymore since it keeps circling round and round and there is no real effective solutions at the moment, no real movement, no real leadership to address it, no real outrage in the collective at large....... just an overwhelming numbness. FUCK IT. Why should anyone really bother to concern themselves. It's a total waste of time at the moment.

Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Apeblog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/website: http://www.mounttotumas.com

I think the numbness represents only those who are suffering from politics-fatigue.

The vast majority of chatter I see online is an ideo/political dumpster-fire of one sort or another. It's all politics all the time sort of like the endless sound of slot machines in Las Vegas.

In the old days you'd read the newspaper and only if you wanted to wallow in the mire did you go leaf over to letters to the editor. Or with TV it was Walter Cronkite news you can trust and if you were really hardcore you'd watch Meet the Press on Sunday morning. Cable news and AM talk shifted news towards opinion but now the internet has tilted the scales to the point where 99% of what you read is opinionating, everything from the peanut gallery comments underneath an MSM article or a facebook wall share.

The internet constantly brushes us up against people we disagree with, but it discourages any sort of civil discourse, and so it's basically the rhetorical equivalent of Baghdad house to house tribal warfare.

That's why it's not hard to understand why some of it spills over into what seems like a new mass shooting event every week.

The only thing keeping a lid on all this is the hope that people are content to merely blow off steam online with words, but since nobody EVER changes anyone's minds online, there is no real satisfaction to be had. It's an endless treadmill.

HALL OF SHAME:-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.

I agree ASG with what you wrote which leads to the conclusion that nourishment of the soul is found turning off your digital device, TV, and restricting media inputs to a minimum. Getting more out of doors.

My Amish forefathers forbid telephones and TV's in the home. Of course no internet in the home. They saw the telephone and television as weakening the strength of their families and communities.

Can't we have a renaissance along these lines just without the Jesus Christ part?

I am down to about 20 minutes a day on line. I still come here for the occasional stimulating dialogue but really the on line experience has become pretty paltry and uninteresting. And the media?

The media reminds me of the tobacco industry manipulating the nicotine content of their products. I always told smokers, "Do you enjoy being manipulated by the tobacco industry every time you light up a cigarette?

This is now the same question I have for everyone who follows the media, social media, cable news outlets etc?

Do you enjoy being manipulated by the media industries in what you ingest?

Think about it.....

We only have ourselves to blame.

There is this incredibly beautiful organic world out there full of organic people with whom we can break bread and share a laugh.

What the fuck are we doing here anyway?

Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Apeblog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/website: http://www.mounttotumas.com

This discussion made me think of Chris Hedges and in searching for his current thoughts I came across the below piece. It may help explain a lot. In short the political divide is the effect of news outlets thirst for profits. I’m not sure that’s all their is to it but it’s one way of looking at it.

Newfie wrote:This discussion made me think of Chris Hedges and in searching for his current thoughts I came across the below piece. It may help explain a lot. In short the political divide is the effect of news outlets thirst for profits. I’m not sure that’s all their is to it but it’s one way of looking at it.

Mass media and social media is actually molding culture. We have touched on this in past threads. The fact that we will always have a majority of citizens who simply do not question. Made worst because our educational system teaches you not to question. We are socialized to conform to the digital gods. Socialized to accept mediocrity.

Something keeps nagging at me though, that somewhere deep inside the catatonic sleep of the collective that there still is this latent animal cunningness that has not died completely. That will not succumb. That at some point a resistance will rise. Am I just projecting my deepest wish or am I tapping into something?

Isn't there inherent in every individual a desire to rise and moult out of his sheeple skin and actualize the self toward emancipation? Or is this just a romantic notion?

Personally I have an extremely hard time understanding how folks accept mediocrity. This gift of life, this short time here being a sentient being and wasted on the mundane.

Why do so many accept so little?

What I am saying here is not the voice of the privileged. You can self actualize and develop a wealthy soul having very little material riches.

Why is our society so deeply asleep?

Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Apeblog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/website: http://www.mounttotumas.com

Ibon wrote:My Amish forefathers forbid telephones and TV's in the home. Of course no internet in the home. They saw the telephone and television as weakening the strength of their families and communities.

The difference is the Amish are a community within a community, a quasi-autonomous intentional community. In a functional democracy, a voter needs to stay engaged and maintain the free-flow of ideas. Tuning out beyond a certain point leads one to being ignorant of what's going on in the world which makes for an uninformed voter.

So the problem is really cultural/psychological. We now have a generation or two of the population that believes that knock-down-winner-take-all is the only mode of political discourse worth having. It is for all intents and purposes...fundamentalist, and on the stage of escalation that leads to civil war. Sorry to invoke Godwin's law but remember that Hitler published his mission-statement after his failed coup. I'm all for freedom of speech but words are not as harmless as one might think. They can be a harbinger of deadly action. As the saying goes: "war is a continuation of politics by other means." Politics is the art of compromise but we live in a society that no longer believes compromise is acceptable, only ALL or NOTHING.

There needs to be a recognition that some minimal rules of conduct are necessary in any political debate, not just at the formal level (ahem, small hands, period blood, etc...) but in how each of us as individuals butt heads.

This erosion of our interpersonal skills is maybe even more of an existential threat than the rest of limits to growth.

HALL OF SHAME:-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.

asg70 wrote:There needs to be a recognition that some minimal rules of conduct are necessary in any political debate, not just at the formal level (ahem, small hands, period blood, etc...) but in how each of us as individuals butt heads.

This erosion of our interpersonal skills is maybe even more of an existential threat than the rest of limits to growth.

You are an above average thinker on this topic. Your average American does not go so deep. Having said that I do believe that on some level the pendulum will swing where folks, even those who don't dissect so deeply this dilemma as we are doing, simply get tired of the current discourse; divisive, uncivil, winner takes all debate, etc. etc.

I have asked before, are we close to the pendulum swinging with a growing desire toward unity in our discourse? Or is this tribal stoking of grievances still have a long way to go?

Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Apeblog: http://blog.mounttotumas.com/website: http://www.mounttotumas.com